Summary:
Stepfun raises hundreds of millions with Shanghai's support.
Fortera Capital leads the Series B financing.
Tencent Holdings and Qiming Venture Partners among notable investors.
Funding will enhance AI models and consumer products.
Shanghai government plans 100 billion yuan fund to support AI startups.
Major Funding for AI Firm Stepfun
A Shanghai-backed investment vehicle has facilitated Stepfun, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup, in raising "hundreds of millions of dollars" during its latest funding round. This comes as local governments in China ramp up their support for domestic technological development.
Leadership of the Funding Round
Fortera Capital, a private-equity firm under the Shanghai State-owned Capital Investment Co (SSCIC), spearheaded Stepfun's recent Series B financing, as noted in a post on Fortera's WeChat account.
Notable Investors
The funding round attracted significant players, including Tencent Holdings, a giant in the video-gaming and social-media sectors, along with Qiming Venture Partners, an early investor in notable companies like ByteDance, Xiaomi, and Meituan. This involvement highlights the growing interest in AI technologies.
Future Developments
Founded in April of last year, Stepfun plans to utilize the new capital to develop foundational AI models that focus on multimodal capabilities and complex reasoning. Additionally, the funding will help enhance the startup's consumer-oriented product portfolio. This initiative aligns with Shanghai's municipal government efforts to promote technological innovation in key industries.
Government Initiatives
In March, Shanghai announced plans to establish a 100 billion yuan (US$13.8 billion) fund aimed at supporting startups in AI, biotechnology, and semiconductors. The SSCIC is actively working to implement national strategies designed to cultivate a competitive AI industry cluster in Shanghai.
About Stepfun
Founded by Jiang Daxin, the former chief scientist at Microsoft Asia Research Institute, Stepfun is one of the many Chinese AI startups striving to keep pace with innovations from their US counterparts. The company has launched the Step-1V multimodal large language model with over 100 billion parameters and is currently testing its Step-2 model, which features more than 1 trillion parameters.
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